Our Story

In 2009, several West Philadelphia friends moved into homes within a few blocks of each other. At the time, someone suggested that they should take advantage of their proximity by taking turns cooking meals.

“We could have a home cooked hot meal three times a week and each would only have to cook once,” someone said. “That might have worked when we were younger,” another replied, “but our current lives have too many responsibilities. It would be a chore, and our schedules can be unpredictable”.

It seemed that the idea was pie in the sky (or in this case dinner in the sky) until one delicious-meal evening one of them came up with an idea. He told his friends about the brainchild, and shortly thereafter, the plan was hatched. Four months later, eight households had shared over 50 meals together.

What a great feeling it was to be able to sit down with friends so often over dinner. Discovering new recipes, being able to get together on short notice, and furthering the development of lasting relationships with friends. The idea was a huge success.

They began thinking about sharing their idea with others and realized that with a little bit of hard work and a lot of ingenuity, they could make the idea available to groups of friends all over the world. And so Shared Meals LLC was born and MealShare.org was released to the public. Using the same system that helped a group of friends go from “that would be great but hard to do” to “I can’t believe how often we eat together,” MealShare provides an online application so that anyone can orchestrate dinners together with friends.